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Communicating with the Dead: Dreams, Visions and Visitations · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: At Halloween, we think about the veil between the worlds
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: growing thin, that this is a time when the dead
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: might make themselves felt. That's part of the traditional understanding
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: of this holiday. One of the ways this happens, and
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: it's been documented numerous times, Jung had a case that
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: was brought to him, and it has happened to someone
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that I was sort of in proximity to. is when
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: someone has a dream at the moment of a loved
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: one's death. Welcome to this Jungian Life, conversations with Jungian
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: analysts on the unseen forces shaping our lives and what
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: it means to be truly human in today's complex world.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: Welcome to This Union Life. My name is Robert Cheveley,
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: and I am a union analyst living in Lisbon, Portugal,
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: and I have a remote practice in Washington, D.C. and Florida.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: I'm chatting with my dear friends, Deb and Lisa, and
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: we want to say, Happy Halloween! Today we're going to
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: talk about communication with the dead. Not an easy topic, and.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Precisely because it's dealing with death and dying. And anything
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: that reminds us of our own mortality is often difficult, challenging,
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: and anxiety-provoking, right?
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: And throughout the centuries, people have wanted to know if
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: there's some way life continues and can we be in touch?
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: Well, we're going to be circumambulating that very topic. You know,
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: it's my hope that by discussing this, we'll be better
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: equipped to face our own death when that time comes,
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: as well as the death of others. I know in
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: my own experiences with death and dying and communication with
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: the dead has been an enormous impact for me personally.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: One of the takeaways is I feel like I know
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: how to die.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: So.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Right at the start, we should acknowledge that there's a
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: huge burden of collective unconsciousness around the subject of death.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: You know, but some form of ghost stories have fueled
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: human imagination since time immemorial. Oh, have either of you
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: seen Widow's Bay?
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, I have not.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Okay, one such example on Apple TV. It just pulled
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: in lots of Emmys. And I kind of think of
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: Agatha Christie. How many mystery novels... have featured exposing the
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: trickery of mediums and their seances. I have something I
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: pulled out from the Book of Symbols that talks about
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: ghost stories. Everywhere in the world there is the concept
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: of ghosts, spirits, the dead that return to haunt the living.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Ghosts reflect our age-old fascination, fear, and bewilderment in relationship
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: to the dead. Feelings, once bound to the living person,
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: slimp into the unconscious at his death and become uncanny,
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: tinged with the archetypal and externalized, hovering between the material
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: and the spiritual. Unresolved grief and persistent attachment to the
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: dead may overwhelm the living, a danger reflected in countless
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: tales of East and West, people by ghosts who have
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: to be vengeful, malicious shapeshifters. Shaman, spiritualist, and exorcist have
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: long been summoned to cure states of possession by the
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: dead or a loss of soul.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: A lot of stuff here today.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: It is, and it's psychologically significant, not because it necessarily
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: proves survival after death, but surely it does reveal how
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: the psyche is transforms, maintains, and even remains bound to relationship,
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: even though the person is gone. And I think from
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: a Jungian perspective, the question becomes what attitude, memory, wound,
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: or unfinished business or wisdom is being carried by the
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: dream or vision of the deceased. Hello.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I want to let this Jungian Life listeners know about
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: a very special opportunity. This winter solstice, the Cosmos Institute
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: will convene its inaugural residential colloquium in Ascona, Switzerland, in
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the magical landscape where Monte Verita and Erinos rose to
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: legendary prominence as centers of artistic, spiritual, and intellectual life.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: An intimate company of scholars and participants will gather at
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Hotel Ascona, high above Lago Maggiore, for five winter days
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: of exceptional depth and beauty. Distinguished speakers, including Gary Lockman
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: and Lawrence Hillman, will offer extended lectures while shared meals,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: unhurried conversation, and time for reflection sustain the life of
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: the gathering. I will also be among those presenting. A
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: highlight will be a visit to Erinos, where Jung, Marie-Louise
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: von Franz, Mircea Eliade, Henri Corbat, James Hillman, and others
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: developed work that profoundly shaped depth psychology and archetypal thought
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: and symbolic imagination. Registration closes November 21st, and you can
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: visit cosmosinstitute.org to learn more. That's Cosmos with a K.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: We'll put that in the show notes. And you should
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: know that listeners of This Jungian Life get a 15%
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: discount on registration. So I hope to see some of
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: you in Switzerland this December. Well, you know, I think
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: when we're talking about communicating with the dead, first of all,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: that's a term that encompasses many different things. And I
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: think we're going to be hitting on a lot of
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: them today. But there's mediumship, which, of course, Jung has
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: a connection with mediumship. There's an experience of maybe feeling
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: the presence of a deceased loved one that I think
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: most of us have had at some point. If we've
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: lost someone, we've kind of felt that person there or
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: felt like they manifested in some in some manner in
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: our life. There are end-of-life experiences which are being studied
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: and have been found to be tremendously helpful, and we'll
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: be talking about some specific examples of that. There are
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: near-death experiences that we've talked about on the podcast before,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: and of course, Jung had an important near-death experience. There
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: are dreams that surround death, so sometimes it might be
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: that there's kind of a a communication and a dream
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: at the moment of someone else's death. We have some
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: examples of that today, too. So it just sort of
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: goes on and on, these different ways that we might
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: feel like we have contact with the dead. And I
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: want to say that, you know, this was something important
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: to Jung. He had his own experiences of this. They
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: were very influential for him. And shaping his ideas, it
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: grew out of his family's interest in in mediumship and mediality.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: His mother was a very medial person. His cousin, Helen Priesberg,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: I think I've heard, did I pronounce that right, Bob?
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: I think it's Priesberg.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Priesberg. Okay, that's great. It's so great to have Bob
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: on the podcast because he actually knows how to speak German.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And so we won't butcher the language quite as badly
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: as we usually do. So she was a medium. And
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: of course, Jung wrote about her. So lots of different
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: experiences of this some of which have been studied with
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: some rigor. And we have to know that there is
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: some possibility that there's something we don't understand, that if
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: we just take a strictly materialist view of consciousness, we
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: might be missing a whole big piece. And Jung, of course,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: really holds that openness. You know, one of the things
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: I really love about Jung is that he just was
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: interested in the phenomenology. And he wasn't going to exclude
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: someone's experience just because there was no explanation for it.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: And he says, intellectual honesty and spiritual courage demand that
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  Speaker 2: we concede death is not a period, but a question mark.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Oh, I like that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do too. We really don't know.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: And death has been part of human curiosity, fear, dread,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: all kinds of things since time immemorial. And I think
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: that quote is right on and that we're called to
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: consider and hold in mind we really don't know.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: But, you know, all cultures going further back than we
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: can document because there's evidence of ritualized burial going deep,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: deep back into human history, even before Homo sapiens. But
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: all cultures have And of course, it's often been the
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: kind of cornerstone of their spiritual system. It's what's given
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: rise to the pyramids in Egypt, all kinds of mythology
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and beliefs and rituals and practices. Burial rights are very
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  Speaker 1: important in most cultures. And so if we believe that somehow, somehow,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: essence of the person continues after death, is there a
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: way to have contact with them? And what are our experience,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: what were Jung's experiences of that?
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  Speaker 3: It's a very fecund subject because there are lots of, well,
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: I think we're going to end up talking some of
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: our own experiences so we can validate it.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Well, Jung's first experience of of something that intimated a
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: kind of contact was when his father died. And Jung
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: was just a young man, and he was in medical school.
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  Speaker 2: And his father appeared in a dream and wanted to know,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: because Jung was studying psychology and all of this, what
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: he wanted to know was how to resolve marital conflict
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: with his own wife. So, Jung never would say this
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  Speaker 2: constitutes an experience of actual life after death, but it
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: was an interesting idea that, of all things that his
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: father would be interested in, this was what he was
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: continuing to something that had concerned him in life, which
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: was his relationship with his wife. So we have dreams.
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  Speaker 2: And they feel very real and very, very surprising.
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  Speaker 3: Well, you know, I like what you said, Deb. But
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  Speaker 3: I think we could even start out by taking it
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  Speaker 3: one step further. There are so many examples of where
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: People who are alive have had communications with people who
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: are deceased. You know, it's a little synchronistic that when
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: we were preparing for this episode, I stumbled across a
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: series of articles in the Washington Post. So there's this
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: doctor by the name of Chris Care, and he's the
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: chief medical officer of Hospice Buffalo for over 30 years.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: And in 2010, he led a research team to study
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: the phenomenon of end-of-life dreams and visions, which they shortened
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: to an acronym, of course, ELDVs. So now we can
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: talk about ELDVs, end-of-life dreams and visions. The study was
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: published in 2014, and one of the findings was these
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  Speaker 3: contacts are strikingly common. 88% of patients reported experiencing at
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: least one.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I came across a statistic that said 90%. So
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: it really reinforces what you're saying. Very common.
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  Speaker 3: Well, so let's just kind of jump in a little
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: bit here and talk about those experiences. So these patients
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  Speaker 3: would see people and places in a number of different
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: states of consciousness. They could be wide awake, they could
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: be half awake or completely asleep, so it would be
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: a dream. But even if it were a dream, they're
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: different in that they convey a striking intensity, an undeniable
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: sense of realness. You know, patients would say, it's nothing
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: like a normal dream. You know, their experience felt real,
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  Speaker 3: wholly immersive, and most important, really meaningful. The study also
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: was sure to eliminate delirium or medication-induced hallucinations, which also
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: commonly occur in dying patients. So this article that I
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: read really talks about the case of Sierra. It was
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: in the Washington Post, and the title was, A Young
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: Mother Could Not Accept She Was Dying Until Her Grandpa
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Appeared to Her. And the author was Caitlin Gibson. We
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: can put a link to this because it's a really
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: interesting read. But she was 28 years old, had a
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: four-year-old son, a fiancé, but had metastatic colon cancer. And
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: it had been diagnosed too late to be treated. She, however,
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: had this indefatigable spirit, you know, that she was going
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: to preserve. consequently, she was in complete denial that her
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: death was imminent. The doctors knew her body was already
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: shutting down, days away from dying. And the doctors and
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: their caregivers were trying to help her come to terms,
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: but they weren't getting through. And so I'm going to
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: quote from the article, but to start, you need to
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: know that her doctor's name was Farrell. Farrell tried to
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: gently help Sierra come to terms with what was going
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: to happen. Farrell said how sorry she was that a
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: cure for Sierra's illness would not be possible. I'm going
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: to beat it, Sierra insisted. Farrell moved to the bedside.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: She asked Sierra if she thought about the future, and
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: Sierra began to weep. Then Farrell asked whether Sierra had
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: been having dreams. Sierra seemed surprised, but then she said yes,
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: and she wasn't sure what to make of them. Is
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: there anyone in particular you have been dreaming about? Farrell asked.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: She remembers how Sarah's gaze then fixed on a specific
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: point in the room, and her demeanor abruptly changed. She
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: was calmer. Hi, Grandpa, she said. She was addressing her
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: mother's late father, a man Sarah adored, who had helped
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: raise her. Farrell immediately looked at Sierra's mother, Tammy, who
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: started to cry. Tammy asked her daughter, What is Grandpa
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: saying to you? Oh, Sierra answered, He's telling me what
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: a good mom I am and what a good daughter
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: I've been. He's telling me he doesn't want me to
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: suffer anymore. Over the next several minutes, as Sierra engaged
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: in conversation with a figure only she could see, she
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: relayed to her family who was in the room what
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: she was hearing. that her grandfather was going to see
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: her soon, and he said that everything would be okay.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: Sarah's mother listened and then told her daughter, when Grandpa
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: comes from you, you go with him, baby girl. The
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: transformation had unfolded in just a matter of minutes. Sarah's vision,
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: Farrell said, had allowed her to finally accept her imminent death,
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: and it had allowed Tammy, her mother, to let her
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: got her dough. Everyone walked out of there speechless, Farrell said. Yeah,
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: pretty powerful. Now, my takeaway is that when we understand and, yeah,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: accept end-of-life visions, and as caregivers we start to ask
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: questions about them, we can learn things we've never known
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: about the dying, and there can be this extraordinarily... deepening
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: or connection or an emotional growth that intensifies and accelerates.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: A sense of peacefulness and acceptance. And I love this.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: The final quote was, even so close to death, Kerr said,
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: there is profound living happening. You know, and I just
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: think that that's such a wonderful bridge to what we
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: really want to circumambulate today. That if we don't relegate
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: these phenomenon, these experiences that are real to sort of, oh,
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: just fantasy or somebody is having an hallucination. But if
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: we give them respect and dignity, it's really meaningful.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: But also I think it is, it could be profoundly
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: arrogant of us to To discount such experiences.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: You know, implicit in that is some sort of a
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: demand for a kind of proof on my terms. Rational, objective,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: scientific proof. And there's an arrogance in that versus the
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: reality in a moving... experience of a different kind of
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: knowing that our Western culture doesn't honor enough. But just
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: as you said, what happened was real. It was witnessed.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: And the people who were there certainly don't doubt it.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: And even hearing you read that newspaper article, I'm deeply
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: moved and touched.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: You know, I just want to to kind of jump
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: in and say that, you know, one of the things
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: that Jung helps us with, right, is the thing that
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: you are suggesting, Bob, that we acknowledge that these are
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: experiences and that they're meaningful and we don't have to
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: explain them. We can simply accept that that they're common,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and that they're meaningful. And we can just take them
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: seriously without weighing in on what we think they are
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: or are not. However, I do want to say, and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: maybe I'm building on what you're suggesting here, Deb, you know,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the thing about these end-of-life experiences that you're talking about, Bob,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: and they are pretty common and they have been researched,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: they actually have a lot of overlap with near-death experiences.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: So in near-death experiences, people often meet deceased loved ones,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: including sometimes people that have so recently deceased that the
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: person who dies doesn't even know they're gone, right? So
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: that's sort of evidence that something's happening, right? Because you
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: go into cardiac arrest and you see your grandfather who
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: died 10 years ago And then you see your uncle,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: who as far as you know, is alive, but you
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: find out later, oh no, he died yesterday, but he's
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: there to welcome you across the other side. Then they
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: resuscitate you and you come back and you report these.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: And of course, there's a common pattern in near-death experiences
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: that's very similar. So these end-of-life experiences share certain things.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: And it's like, are we looking at the same phenomenology?
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: And then Should we just be saying, well, this is
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: a meaningful psychological experience or is this evidence of some
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: kind of continued consciousness past the death of the body?
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just want to put that out there
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: that I think, to your point, we're a little arrogant
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: if we don't acknowledge that that might be a possibility.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Of course, this has been a preoccupation for human beings.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: you know, really since the beginning of time. What happens
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: when we die? What happens when I die? You know,
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: what will happen to me? But to go back to
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: your point of the near-death experiences, and we can put
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: this in the link as well, at the University of Virginia,
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: there's a division of perceptual studies. And serious people, there's
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: a YouTube video that you can find And there are
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: so many experiences where people have seen things, known things,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: heard things that are verifiable in the external world. And
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: they choose people and cases very, very carefully and investigate
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: them assiduously. Learned, well-academically degreed people And they say that
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: 90% of these reports are accurate, that they are verifiable.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: A child will remember living in a certain place and
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: having a different parent and tells them specifically about where
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: he or she was. And upon investigation, these things are
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: borne out. So whatever we may think, There is something
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: going on here, you know, and that goes for what
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: you were saying, Lisa, about Jung. These are actually experiences.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: That part is undeniable.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: That's why I love Jung. And I don't know whether
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: you know this about me, but before segwaying into psychology,
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: I was biopremed. So I have this really strong science background.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: So I approached my first analysis. coming from a scientific background.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: And it was like, the analysis was like the scales
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: falling from my eyes, because I had other experiences that
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: didn't fit that paradigm. And that's exactly why we are Jungian,
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: and I'm sure our listeners share that in their experience
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: as well. An influential author for me was Morton Kelsey.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: He wrote The Other Side of Silence. And The subtitle
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: is A Guide to Christian Meditation. But in there, he
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: has this wonderful diagram that I really like. He talks
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: about the universe of time, matter, space, and energy, things
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: that we can measure. And the scientific paradigm says that's
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: what's real. But if we look at it a different way,
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: that there's this whole other realm which is the field
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: of Jungian psychology, the unconscious, the collective unconscious archetypes that
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: is equally real, even if necessarily no one has measured
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: an archetype on a scale.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: So let's jump into what we're really talking about when
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: we talk about contact with the dead. And of course,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: you know, at Halloween, we think about the veil between
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: the worlds growing thin. that this is a time when
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the dead might make themselves felt. That's part of the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: traditional understanding of this holiday. One of the ways this happens,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: and it's been documented numerous times, Jung had a case
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: that was brought to him, and it has happened to
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: someone that I was sort of in proximity to, is
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: when someone has a dream at the moment of a
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: loved one's death. So I was working in my 20s.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: I was working for a relief and refugee organization in
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: the former Yugoslavia. And unfortunately, one of the people who
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: worked for us died in an automobile accident. She was
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: actually driving a truck. And I attended her funeral where
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: I met her her boyfriend, who was very shaken, understandably,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: just devastated. And he shared that he was, so she
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: was in Europe and he was in Mexico when she died.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: And so he was asleep. You know, it happened during
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: the day in Central Europe time, but it was earlier
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: in Mexico. And he was asleep and he had a dream.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: in which she was driving a kind of vehicle. It
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: was like a kind of a children's truck or something
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: or a car, like kind of a go-kart. And there
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: was a crash. She crashed and she came over to
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: him and emptied her pockets in the dream and gave
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: him the money that was in her pockets and said,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: I don't need this anymore. And, you know, he had
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: that dream at the approximate time of her death. And again,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: you know, this is something that happens. Pastor Feflin, I
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: think I'm saying that right, wrote to him.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: Feflin.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Feflin.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: You have to give that initial P. Right.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, Feflin.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, right. He lost his brother in an accident in Africa.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: And at the time of the accident, he spontaneously experienced
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: a conversation with this brother. And he wrote to Jung
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: about it, and Jung responded to him in January 1939.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Jung says, First of all, I would like to express
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: my heartfelt sympathy over the heavy loss that has befallen you.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Since you wish to know what I think about such experiences,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: I would like to point out before anything else that
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: there is a direct connection between the event in Africa
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: and your consciousness. This is an undeniable fact. and in
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: my opinion there is only one explanation, namely that spatial
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: distance is, in the psychic sense, relative. In other words,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: physical space is not, under all circumstances, a definite datum,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: but under certain conditions is also a psychic function. One
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: might call it psychically contractile. We must suppose that the
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: distance between your brother's experience and your own was reduced
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: to a minimum. From similar experiences, we must conclude that
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: this nullification of space proceeds with great speed so that
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: perceptions of this kind occur almost simultaneously with the accident.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: We can therefore speak of a psychic nullification of time
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: as well. We could also suppose that the victim of
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: the accident sent out a kind of radio message, but
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: this is contradicted by the fact that occasionally details are
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: transmitted which occurred only after the death. For instance, the
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: decapitation of the body of one killed by being stabbed
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: with a knife. In that event, there can be no
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: question of a transmission by a dying man. It is
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: more probable that it is a perception by someone alive
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: and seeing. Here, the psychic nullification of space and time
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: offers a much better explanation. So here we hear Jung
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: wrestling with this phenomenon that, again, many people have experienced.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: In fact, Jung himself had a dream, a precognitive dream,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: I think the night before his mother died. that the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: wild huntsman had come to claim a soul. And then
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: he woke up to the news, I believe, of his
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: mother's death. I don't have that right in front of me.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: But my guess is that many of the people listening
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: have had a similar experience or know someone that has.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is quite common. It's remarkable when it happens,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: but it It happens.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: Let me tell you a little bit about my own
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: personal history. It's not quite the same thing, but there
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: is a way in which it really resonates, which is
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: in the mid-90s, I was working with a group of
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: people who were providing care and support to people dying
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: of AIDS. And a dear friend of mine we were
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: very close, was dying. And I had read this book
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: called Final Gifts, which I really can recommend. Well, for anybody,
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: because it's about death and dying. And I have found
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: that the understanding that I gleaned from the book has
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: been very, very helpful for me. But because I had
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: read this book, it was published, I think, in 92
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: or 93. So, I read it a few years after publication.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: My friend was in the hospital, and I was aware
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: of the stories. It's written by two hospice nurses who
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: just document the experiences of their patients who are in
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: a dying process, not a sudden death. And I came in,
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: I guess, in mid-morning or late morning, and I was
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: surprised when I My friend said, Chuck was here last night,
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: who was his best friend who had died of AIDS
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: maybe six or seven months before. And I said, oh, really?
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: Tell me about that. He said, oh, he was just
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: over there, you know, on the ledge in front of
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: the windowsill, just sitting. But it was really nice to
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: have him. A few days later, oh, Dad was here
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: last night.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: So.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: Two personal examples of where somebody who's in a dying
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: process is visited by the dead.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Again, incredibly common.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So my friend passes, and I'm in an
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: intense grieving process. I had a vision, and this happened
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: while I was in a workshop for holotropic breath work.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: So just the exercises of the workshop you know, were opening,
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: if you will, for me. But a lot of grief kept,
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: I was crying a lot in the workshop. And I
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: had this vision, which was my friend appeared to me
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: as an angel. And there was no verbal communication, but
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: he was extremely proud of his wings, which were which
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: were the colors of coronation tapestry, gold, ruby, and emerald.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: You know, and he would turn, you know, and bring
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: his wing over and show me, you know, that's just
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: like Jim. But for me, the effect was, first of all,
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, it lifted six months from my
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: grieving process, but it was tremendously reassuring. You know, that
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: knowing that he was okay. Yes.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Jung dreamt about Emma, his wife, after she died. They'd
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: had a long marriage, five children. You know, all of
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Jung's interests and work permeated their household. And it was
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: a huge loss for Jung. And he had a dream
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: of her doing her own personal work, which was studies
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: about the Grail. And that he dreamed she was in
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: the south of France pursuing her studies. And he found
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: the dream so reassuring, you know, and he would not
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: go so far as to say, see, he wouldn't reduce
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: it to our conscious, earthly way of making sense of things.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: by saying, this means that. But what he said was,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: you know, how wonderful it was to see her alive
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: and pursuing something that she had devoted years of study to.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, I'm imagining that maybe, you know,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: skeptics or people that insist on communication being in my
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: reality would say, well, you know, no, your friend doesn't
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: have wings like that, you see, or Emma is not
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: traveling around the south of France, but that these are
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: the symbolic ways that a kind of living reality, a
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: kind of communication, a kind of knowing can come through
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: to us on this particular temporal plane That we occupy.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: And the knowing that you experienced, Bob, you know, and
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: the knowing that Jung experienced are enormous and real. And
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: we only have limited awareness in our embodied existence as
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: a species on this planet.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: That's right. You know, you mentioned mediums before. and we
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: touched on it briefly, but Jung wrote his, I guess
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: his thesis, I think it was his undergraduate thesis on mediumship.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: He attended a lot of seances. William James was also
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: very interested in mediums and studied them. So it has
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: deep roots in the history of psychology. And Jung was
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: very impressed that his young cousin seemed to be able
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: to manifest a more developed, progressed part of herself. She
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: seemed to be able to access some wisdom that was
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: really at odds with, I think she was just a
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: teenager when she was giving these seances. And, you know,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: for him, this was the first intimation of the existence
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: of the self, for example. And a little bit of
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: a foretaste of individuation, that the eventual potential of the
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: person was making itself manifest. That's how he kind of
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: understood it. So he understood it sort of psychologically. But
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: we know for sure that Jung was interested in these things.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: And I will say that after my mother passed, In 2019,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: you know, a few years later, I went to see
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: a medium who came highly recommended. And it was quite
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: remarkable because he immediately sort of got her name right
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: away and then kind of got sort of both of
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: my kids' names. And he said, well, your mother is
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: sending a message. And, you know, it was like a
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: little hard for him to get it. He shared the message,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: and the message made sense on a kind of metaphorical level.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: It was something I could immediately understand in terms of
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: one of the main concerns that I had going on
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: in my life at the time, again, as a metaphor.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: But later on, weeks later, I understood that there had
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: been something happening literally at the moment that I was
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: having this reading. where the message was also true literally.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: It worked on both a literal and a metaphoric level.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: But there was something that I didn't know was happening,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: but the message directly addressed it. So, you know, a
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: kind of easy thing to imagine is, you know, it's
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: not hard to find me on the internet if you
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: wanted to figure out the names of my family members,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: you could. You wouldn't have to Google that long before
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: you could come across that. So did this medium look
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: me up? But it doesn't really make sense that he
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: would have. But in any case, you can take it
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: however you like.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: You see, you're right at that tension that's so hard
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: for us because we're raised in this society that is
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: Western scientific thought, or at least Newtonian thought. Because thinking
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: about his letter to Pastor Pfefflin, Jung really is talking
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: about quantum phenomenon. So while we only can identify these
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: kinds of elimination of space and time using quantum particles,
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: if a charmed quark that exists here knows the spin
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: of its partner light years away and will change in
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: relationship to it, It's not that hard to kind of imagine.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: It's not. And I want to share just one more
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: sentence from that letter. Jung says, all the signs indicate
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: that your conversation with your brother is a genuine experience
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: which cannot be psychologized.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And Jung worked with people like Einstein and a
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: physicist named Wolfgang Pauli. right along these lines of the
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: quantum theory and physics and some of these things that
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: we experience as tremendous mysteries. And they were all interested
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: in science and what could be quantified and kind of
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: proven in a scientific way. And the mystery and the
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: magic of these things, like those quarks that you mentioned, Bob,
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: of there's one here and there's one light years away
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: that are somehow connected, entangled. Do we understand the universe?
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: We dare to imagine that our everyday understanding can possibly
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: embrace all of these mysterious holes, and we are given
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: intimations again and again and again. And today, in actual
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: terms of physics, of things are particles if you look
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: at them one way, and then they become waves. The
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: observer actually changes the phenomena of what is going on.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: So here we are on the edge of something that
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: we can't explain rationally, and the phenomena are real, they're universal,
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: they've existed for millennia, and they have been reported in
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: all of the mainstream religious traditions and in your life.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting because at some point I started
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: asking everyone I knew who had lost someone, I will say,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: have they visited you? And when you ask people that,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: you know, especially in a sort of matter of fact way,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: what usually happens is they tear up or they say, why, yes,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: because it's very, very common that people feel some connection
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: with like you did, Bob, where you where you saw
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: your friend in that vision. Some people just, you know,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: in the days after the person's passing, they'll be sitting
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: in a room and suddenly the room will be filled
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: with the scent of roses. Or I knew someone who
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: there was like a little bell that hung in the
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: room that just started ringing by itself. And sometimes it's
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: a synchronicity. It's a bird that you've rarely seen, but
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: it appears and it makes you think of that person.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: And these are sort of liminal phenomenology. You know, we
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: can't say exactly what they are or aren't, but we
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: do know that it has an emotional impact. I want
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: to keep on coming back to that because it is very,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: you know, Bob, you said it took months off your grief.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: I've seen that as well with people who are grieving
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: and then they have a significant experience of feeling contacted
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: by that person. They have a subjective experience of, being
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: contacted by that person, and it does assuage some of
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: the grief.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: I will relate, you know, my one and only experience
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: of a dream about somebody who had died. And, you know,
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: when my mother died, I was just in my early 20s,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: and I longed for some message or reassurance. I didn't
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: live near her. My sister did. And she had an experience.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: And I so wanted one. And I didn't get one.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: But then this aunt, by marriage, quite later in our lives,
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: and we were in our 50s, we moved. My husband's
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: uncle had remarried. And this was a very kind, dear woman,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: conventional homemaker, gardener, observed all of the wonderful holidays with
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: house decorations and invited us over. And I became very
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: fond of her. But we weren't close. And then we
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: really close. My definition of close, right? We moved away,
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: and she asked me to stay in touch, and I did,
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: but I knew not as much as she would really
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: have liked. And she died unexpectedly, pretty suddenly, and I
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: felt very bad about not having kept more in touch.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: I could have been, I could have taken that time.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: And I dreamed of her in a business suit looking
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: fabulous and wonderful like she was a CEO.
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: You know, in charge of things, running things in a
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: leadership position, and dressed so beautifully and professionally. And I felt,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: I was so grateful for that dream. And that there
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: she was really in a kind of glory that I
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: had not seen her in, in her, you know, from
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: an external world perspective, very ordinary life in a little
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: ranch house in Pittsburgh. And there she was. And it,
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: still has, in telling this, such an impact on me
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: of how big and beautiful and authoritative there she was
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: in the fullness of herself.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: You know, what we're talking about is absolutely foundational to
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: all of Jungian psychotherapy. Hmm. I'd like us to switch
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: to this book, Septim Simonis Ad Mortuos. So just a
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: little bit of contextualization. I'm sure most of us know
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: that initially Jung was a disciple of Freud. In fact,
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: he was the first president of the International Analytic Association.
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: And there was a great admiration between the two. He
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: was named by Freud as his heir apparent. Then Jung
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: continues to develop his theories. And in 1911, he begins
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: writing Symbols of Transformation. The first part is published and
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: Freud approves of it. And then next year, he does
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: the second part where he elaborated his theory of libido.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: And differentiated it from what Freud's theory was. Then we
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: have the big break with Freud, which happened in January
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: of 1913. And that precipitated Jung's encounter with the unconscious.
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: And we all know how important that was. These visions
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: that came to him, these personalities. This is when the
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: core material from the Red Book appears. You know, Salome, Elijah, Izdubar, Philemon.
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: And so he's grappling with this material. And then in 2000,
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: I keep saying that, in 1916, he writes Seven Sermons
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: of the Dead. And this is from NDR. The atmosphere
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: in the house was very, very spooky. There was an
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: ominous atmosphere all around me. The air was filled with
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: ghostly entities. The atmosphere was thick, believe me. And then
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: I think you, Lisa, had said something about the doorbell ringing.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: It wasn't just the atmosphere.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Right. So he talks at great length, yeah, about what
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: it was like in the house at that time. And
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to read a little bit more. He says,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: around five o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday, the front
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: doorbell began ringing frantically. Now this door The doorbell is
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: an actual bell that hangs by a rope. The bell
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: is inside, but the rope leads outside, and it's just
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: hanging there. And, Deb, I know you just saw that bell,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: so I want to hear about that. But I remember
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: visiting Jung's house in Kuznacht and being like, oh, there's
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: the bell, because it's big. It's a big bell. Okay.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Around five o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday, the front
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: doorbell began ringing frantically. It was a bright summer day,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: The two maids were in the kitchen, from which the
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: open square outside the front door could be seen. Everyone
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: immediately looked to see who was there, but there was
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: no one in sight. I was sitting near the doorbell
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: and not only heard it, but saw it moving. We
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: all simply stared at one another. The atmosphere was thick,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: believe me. Then I knew that something had to happen.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: The whole house was filled as if there were a
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: crowd present, crammed full of spirits. They were packed deep
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: right up to the door, and the air was so thick,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: it was scarcely possible to breathe. As for myself, I
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: was all a quiver with a question, for God's sake,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: what in the world is this? Then they cried out
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: in chorus, We have come back from Jerusalem, where we
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: found not what we sought. That is the beginning of
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: the Septim Sermones. And then it started to flow out
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: of him.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: And I was just there this past week for the
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: second time. So what I want to add to that
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: is that Jung's house does not have any shrubbery right
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: around the outside. There's gravel, there are steps, there's a driveway.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: So it's not as if the view was unobstructed or...
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: if you quickly ran to the door and opened it,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: you would see someone still moving, running, trying to get away.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: So that kind of common-sense explanation doesn't fly. And I
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: was with a friend and colleague, Hilary Morgan, who is
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: a filmmaker, making a film about one of Jung's famous analysands,
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: Christiana Morgan, and she wanted to film the bell moving
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: and the sound of it ringing. And it was a
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: lovely experience for me to stand in front of Jung's
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: house and ring the bell.
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: Well, with the ringing of the bell, I'd like to
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: read a little bit from this. And the subtitle is,
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: The Seven Sermons to the Dead, written by Basilides in Alexandria,
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: the city where the East touches the West. So Jung,
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: while Jung is writing it, he's channeling, and you'll immediately
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: hear how archaic the language is. Sermon 1. The dead
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: came back from Jerusalem. where they found not what they sought.
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: They prayed me, let them in, and besought my word.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: And thus I began my teaching. And then just shortly later,
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: he starts talking about the Pleroma. And I think we
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: can hold this in terms of the concepts that we know,
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: like the Uroboros, the idea of that psychic space before
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: differentiation happens, that is common in human development. This nothingness
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: or fullness we name the pleroma, therein both thinking and
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities.
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: In it no being is, for he then would be
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: distinct from the pleroma and would possess qualities which would
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: distinguish him, as something different from the pleroma. In the
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: pleroma there is nothing in everything. It is quite fruitless
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: to think about the pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution.
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: So after describing the pleroma, then he goes on to
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: talk about creatura. What is the harm, ye ask, in
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: not distinguishing oneself? If we do not distinguish, we get
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: beyond our own nature, away from creatura. we fall into indistinctiveness,
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: which is the other quality of the pleroma. We fall
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: into the pleroma itself and cease to be creatures. We
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: are given over to dissolution and nothingness. This is the
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: death of the creature. Therefore, we die in such measure
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: as we do not distinguish. Hence, the natural strivings of
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: the creature goeth toward distinctiveness, fighting against primeval perilous sameness.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: This is called the principium individuationis. This principle is the
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: essence of the creature. From this, you can see why
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: indistinctiveness and nondistinguishm are a great danger for the creature. So,
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: this principle that he's talking about, you know, is a
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: term from medieval philosophy, but boy, it sure sounds like
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: individuation to me. And then, one last little thing. He
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: must not forget that the Pleroma hath no qualities. We create, then,
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: through thinking. If, therefore, ye strive after differences or sameness,
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: or any qualities whatsoever, ye pursue thoughts which flow out
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: of the Pleroma. Thoughts, namely, concerning non-existing qualities of the Pleroma.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: Inasmuch as ye run after these thoughts, ye fall again
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: into the pleroma, and reach difference and sameness at the
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: same time. Therefore, this is the part I like, therefore,
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: not after difference, as ye think it must ye strive,
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: but after your own being. At bottom, therefore, there is
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: only one striving, namely, striving after your own being. If
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: ye had this striving, ye would not need to know
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: anything about the Pleroma and its qualities, and yet would
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: ye come to your right goal by virtue of your
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: own being. Since, however, though estranged from being, that knowledge
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: must I teach you, wherewith ye may be able to
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: hold your thoughts in leash. Sonu Shamdasani and Jim Hillman
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: had ongoing conversations about the seven sermons and its importance
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: for all of Jung's theory.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: And can you say who Jim Hillman and Sonu Shamdasani are?
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: Please, take it away.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: Well, Sonu Shamdasani is a Jungian historian and scholar who
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: was instrumental in in bringing the Red Book to publication.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: For all of us, he's written extensively. And James Hillman
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: was a Jungian analyst who was very interested in archetypal
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: theory and its relevance to furthering Jung's ideas. And he, too,
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: has written extensively. So imagine these two very, very learned
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: men having this conversation. So back to you, Bob.
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: Thank you. And thank you. I appreciate that, Deb. And
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: the title of the book is Lament of the Dead,
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: Psychology After the Red Book. But it starts with seven sermons.
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: Here is Shamdasani. This work is Jung's Book of the Dead.
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: It is descent into the underworld in which there is
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: an attempt to find the way of relating to the dead.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: Listen to this. He comes to the realization that unless
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: we come to terms with the dead, we simply cannot live,
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: and that our life is dependent on finding answers to
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: their unanswered questions. And then just a little bit later,
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: and this is so germane to our topic today, it
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: is the dead. This is no mere metaphor. This is
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: no cipher for the unconscious or something like that. When
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: he talks about the dead, he means the dead. And
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: they're present in images, and they live on still. And
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: then just a little bit later in this first chapter,
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: they talk about the importance of this, and it's mind-blowing.
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: Hillman's saying, okay, so what do we do now, given
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: the Red Book, given seven sermons? Because it seems to
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: me those 18 volumes of the Collected Works, those 18
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: volumes of his, have to be reconsidered. They don't seem
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: to be in the Red Book, Shamdasani says. I sometimes
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: thought that if a fire broke out, What text would
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: I take? This, the seven sermons, is the text of
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: Jung that I would take, and I would leave the rest.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: You can reconstruct so much of what is essential and
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: what is to come in the rest of his works
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: from the seven sermons. So you have these fantastic Jungian
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: scholars saying, no, it's not just psychological. It's not just
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: your typical act of imagination or dream. They're saying it's really,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: it is the dead.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think we've been sort of making that
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: point this whole time that we've been having this conversation, right?
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: Like if you have a dream in which a deceased
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: loved one appears, maybe it's not just psychological metaphor. Maybe
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: you are having contact with that person. Sometimes it certainly
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: feels that way. And if you see a deceased loved
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: one beckoning you on as you approach the end of
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: your life, maybe that's not just a lovely fantasy. Maybe
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: there's something real here. And what's beautiful about Jung is
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: he gives us a way to relate to that possibility
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: Without asking us to abandon our critical thinking.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: And maybe a good friend really is proud of his
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: angel wings.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes. And that that's, again, like dreams, it's speaking
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: in a different language.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: You know, but where I'm going with all of this
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: is it really underscores the importance of individuation. It really,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: really matters to find that way of being. And I
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: turn back to Odysseus, who makes his trip down to Hades,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: down to the realm of the dead, where there are shades.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: And I always envisioned them sort of these gray, sort
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: of shadowy, but somewhat amorphous, you know, people who once were.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: But he goes down there in order to talk to Tiresias,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: who was a sage. And Tiresias is still human or
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: in more defined human form and able to converse.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: Because why?
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: Because he had spent his life developing his own being,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: becoming wise, becoming what we would call today individuated. So
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: what if it all really matters that we have a
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: redemptive function for those in the past as well as
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: for our own development, wisdom, I would include kindness, loving kindness.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: What if it really, really matters? What if that's really
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: our job?
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: You know, I think this question about what does happen
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: after death and what that means, it certainly raises these questions,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: doesn't it?
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: Right. But here we are now. We have work to do,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: and there is a huge question mark. That's what we
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: started with, was that we don't know. This life doesn't
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: end with a period, but with a question mark. And
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: I'll add something that Jung said, which is it would
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: seem to be more in accord with with the collective
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: psyche of humanity to regard death as the fulfillment of
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: life's meaning and as its goal in the truest sense
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: instead of a meaningless cessation. So here we are. What
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: are we going to do with this?
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: I want to just make a little detour, Deb, because
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: you just said this really important thing about how death
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: is the fulfillment. And so I want to talk about
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: sort of how we grieve and what grief is like.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: And we've been talking throughout this episode about grief and
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: how comforting contact with the dead can be for those
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: of us who are left behind. But there's a new
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: iteration of this that I think is worth us looking
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: at for a minute, which is popularly referred to as
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: grief tech. So there are now services that will scrape
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: the internet, let you upload emails, text messages, social media
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: postings from your deceased loved one to create an AI
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: grief bot. And they can even, well, so it's an
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: AI that is kind of trained on the output of
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: your loved one. So for example, your husband dies and
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: you upload your email conversations, your text messages, all kinds
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: of information about him. They can even clone his voice
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: and then you can continue to interact with him with
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: this kind of virtual bot of your deceased loved one
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: And of course, you know, the promise is that it
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: eases grief, that it kind of helps you acclimate to
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: the person's disappearance. But it's a little different than other
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: forms of memorialization because it allows you to perhaps exist
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: in a place where you don't have to come to
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: terms with the person's passing. You can, it could function
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: that way, right? It could, it could help. But if
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: it's super convincing, you could kind of be stuck in
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: this place. It makes me think of Freud's differentiation between
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: mourning and melancholia. To mourn something, we have to try
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: to come to terms with the absence, never heal it.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: But in some sense, it's a recognition on the part
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: of the ego that we are powerless. to bring the
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: person back, for example. And of course, there's all kinds
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: of myth about that, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: You know, he wants to bring her back, but it
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: turns out not to be possible. And Gilgamesh is so
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: saddened by the death of Enkidu that he wants to
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: find the secret of immortality, but it slips through his
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: fingers like again and again. We can't actually do that.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: We can't forestall death. We can't keep our loved one here.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: We can't bring them back. But now there's a way
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: where you can digitally memorialize them and even bring them
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: back in a way that feels like they're still there.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: So does it forestall our ability to do the hard
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: work of Of integrating that loss. I mean, it's a
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: stunning question.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: And my answer to your question is, yes.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: We don't like it.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: We're worried about it.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: We have concerns.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't want to overstate myself, but no, it
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: just doesn't ameliorate grief. It suppresses it. One doesn't do
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: the grief work necessary. And moreover, in my thinking, it
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: forecloses the person's future. You know, they're still relating with
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: the lost beloved, and there's no space for something new
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: to enter.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: And we haven't let that person grow angel wings or
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: move to the south of France.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: Bingo, bingo. Oh, I hadn't even thought of it in
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: those terms.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: Because when we're dealing with a grief, part of it
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: is that we still experience the person as beyond our control.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: They are other, even though we live with them inside
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: of us.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: But what a disservice to the dead.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: Yes. I can feel my own teariness about that. That
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: is such a disservice.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: To the person who has lost a beloved, of the
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: sadness and the grief and the coming to terms with
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: an absence. It is a part of our life here.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: It is part of our work. And to foreclose it
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: and go into this kind of art, it is hard.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: and intensely artificial and a disservice to the bereaved. I
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: understand why it certainly would be attractive because when a
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: beloved dies, You don't know who you are anymore. Yeah.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: You know, your world has been rent in two. You
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: are torn apart.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: That person, that beloved with whom one is, has built
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: a life where we're psychically enmeshed, you know, where we
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: are the other person's beloved is no more. We literally
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: have lost a part of ourselves. That's horribly painful and grueling.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: And yet, I think if life is to continue, absolutely necessary.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: And before there were whatever they're called, bots, I had
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: a client years ago, and I think many people can
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: relate to this, who kept her beloved's voicemail. This still
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: just breaks my heart. So she would call and hear
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: his very funny voicemail because she shared it and I
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: heard it too. And it was very much essence of
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: this person who had died. And the moment came in
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: the course of our work where it had to be canceled.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: And then a whole new phase of grieving could begin.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: So I want to just recommend, there's a beautiful essay
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: about grief tech by the brilliant British analyst Alessandra Lemma
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: in her most recent book, Psychotechnical Becomings. It's the last chapter.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: And the whole book is great, but... I really appreciated
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: the grief bot chapter, and I just want to read
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: a quote from it. So this is Alessandro Lemma quoting
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: the British journalist Matthew Parris, writing about the death of
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: his father. And he says, Quite simply, he has left
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: a space that will never be filled. Therefore, he is
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: paradoxically still here, because the space is still here, and
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: I can feel it all the time. The gap Dad
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: left is not a vacuum, a void, a soft area
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: of low pressure to be filled. The gap is hard-edged,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: chiseled by him into my life, measured by his worth,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: and ineradicable.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: Beautiful.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is beautiful. And with that, I wonder if
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: we should switch to a dream. So today's dream is
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: from a woman who's 52 years old, and she is
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: the executive assistant to the vice provost of the university.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: And she titled her dream, Where'd the Horse Come From?
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: And here's the dream. I was walking down an alleyway.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: My dog was with me. One of my sons was
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: with me, and I think maybe my daughter, but that's
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: more of a feeling. I was walking ahead a bit
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: and saw a tall privacy fence on a slightly elevated
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: plot of land with no visibility inside. Then there was
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: a horse with us. We weren't freaking out about that,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: even though it wasn't our horse. The horse was smallish
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: but not a pony and was calm and just walking along.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: When I got to the corner, I saw steps up
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: to the fenced area and a door. I opened and
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: inside were two women, a dog, and what at first
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: looked like a dog's front body on a cow's back body.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: But after looking, I realized it was just a cow.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: I called back to my son not to come up
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: there because I wasn't sure how our dog would act.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: I didn't seem to be thinking about the horse. The
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: ladies didn't know about the horse and thought the dog
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: would be fine. They were friendly and encouraged me to
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: let the dogs play together. The women, who seemed to
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: be a couple because they were very affectionate to each other,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: came to the door and talked. Then the horse came
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: behind me and poked its head in over my shoulder
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: and they seemed, of course, a bit frightened and were
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: wary of the horse coming in. And so here's some context.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: She said, I'm in a period of self-discovery as I
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: make my way through menopause, my kids being older, and
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: my role in family and life changing. I've been doing
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of reading and exploration of Psyche. She's been
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: reading Goddesses and Every Woman, Women Who Run With the Wolves, etc.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: Those are some great books. And I've also been doing
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of spiritual reading and in general going inward.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: The main feelings in the dream, she was curious, especially
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: about the elevated fenced-in area, the dog-cow creature, when I
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: thought that's what I saw at first, and the women,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: and excited to know like-minded women And for association, she says,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: I have two sons, 22 and 21, and the one
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: in the dream, the younger, is the one I worry
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: about in some ways. I feel like my daughter, 16,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: was there, but I don't recall seeing her, just a feeling.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: I've lately been missing close female friendships, if that may
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: be related to the women. I don't know what to
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: make of the horse appearing.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: Isn't it great that she titled her dream with that?
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: She got it.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: She got it.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: And what the heck is a horse doing there?
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: And by the way, that's one of the reasons it's
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: a great exercise to give your dream a title if
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: you keep a dream journal, which you should. It's great
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: to give your dream a title because it forces you
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: to think like, what's the most salient thing about the dream?
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: And I agree, Deb. It's like, okay, wait a minute.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: We just like, just go straight to that horse, you know?
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: Well, the horse wants to come in for sure. Lots
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: of ways in which It's trying to make its presence known. Well,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: we just talked about symbols of libido, and I think
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: the horse is a very profound symbol of libido.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. And contrasted with dog or cow, which are very
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: domesticated animals. You know, cows are sort of peaceful and
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: grazing their way along in a field. Dogs, of course,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: are our companions. proverbially man's best friend. But horses, I think,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: straddled the realm between being utterly tamed and being wild.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: There are still wild horses out west in the U.S.,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: and they're visible. If you travel through places like New Mexico,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: you'll see them.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. There are even some areas with wild horses on
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: the East Coast. But But, you know, Jung actually said
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: that the horse is a symbol for life energy, which
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: I think that's a great way to think about it.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: But I want to also just kind of start at
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: the beginning, right? Because she's walking down an alleyway, which
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: you think about an alleyway as fairly closed, right?
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: Narrow.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: She's with her son and they've got her dog. And
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: then she sees the raised area that's fenced. And so
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: what I'm thinking about is it's kind of an image
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: of Temenos. There's an area that is set aside, that's
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: raised up a bit, that's fenced. There's some kind of
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: enclosed something, and that's when the horse appears. So when
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at a dream like this, one of the
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: things I'm interested in is what happens right before the
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: horse appears? And what happens is she comes to this,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: dare I say, sacred place, this place that's set off
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: from the rest of life in some sense, where something...
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: interesting is happening. There are these two women, they're very
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: affectionate with each other, and then there's this, maybe this
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: kind of dog-cow, but at least another dog, and there's
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: a feeling of warmth. She's arrived somewhere, and that's when
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: this new libido symbol perhaps appears.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: And going back to the alleyway, it's what's behind the
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: house what's not visible that's great that's great so it
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: makes what you're saying even more important because that's where
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: she's coming from but i think it also resonates with
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: the title what's this horse there's some unconsciousness here something
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: sub rosa something that's is trying to push to come
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: in but.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: Right it wants to make itself known.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah but what i find so delightful in the dream
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: as an absolute image for life is there they are.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: They're just walking along together and then there's a horse. So, yeah, okay.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't not my horse. And it's just calm
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: and it's just walking along. Now, if we could translate
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: this dream to something that happens in waking life, it
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: would be impossible for us all to be walking along
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: accompanied by a horse that appears out of nowhere and
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: not notice it, not exclaim about it, not be curious
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: about it. And I think about that all the time.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: What are we being accompanied by that is a huge
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: source of life and power and has all kinds of
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: symbolic meaning and not really pay attention to it? Yeah.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: There's so much that happens to us that we just
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: We see it, but we don't get it. But in
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: the dream, it insists. Right at the end, the horse says, hey,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: wait a minute. I want to be part of all this.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: I've been walking along beside you all this time.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: And I want to say something about where this woman
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: is in her life, because I'm not that far away
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: from that stage of life myself. And in my own
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: personal experience and in the experience of women, I've seen
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: this again and again with women. Like once, you know,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: you're sort of, you're reaching the end of your active parenting,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: you know, where the youngest one's about ready to, you
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: there is just sort of this upwelling of often of
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: new energy. And it can take you by surprise. And
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: just like there was this big shift in your values
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: when your kids are born, like suddenly what used to
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: matter to you doesn't matter to you anymore. And you're
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: just like completely focused on the kids. I'm totally speaking
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: from personal experience here. But then at the other end,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: when they leave, it's.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: Like, pfft.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: It's like, whew, that you can feel that going away
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: and something else poking its head over your shoulder going,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: here I am.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: And Margaret Mead called it postmenopausal zest.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: I like that.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: I love that phrase. And there's the horse poking his
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: head over the shoulder.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: Here I am. But that's where the tension is because
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: our dreamer is aware of the zest. You know, she's
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: reading Clarissa Pinocchio Estes, and she's aware that, well, maybe
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: this dream has something to do with needing like-minded women.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: So that's of which she is aware and conscious. But
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: the thing that the corrective, I would say, that the
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: dream is trying to address is this libido that wants
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: to be known. You know, she passes the crossroads. She
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: goes beyond the corner. She climbs up. She gets to
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: the house where she meets... I mean, this is the
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: house of feminine relationship. Yeah.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: Yes. And also, shadow, perhaps, right?
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: Yes. That's actually what I think the women represent. Because...
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: they're also a little wary of the horse. Yep. But
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: when I am in the presence, where in the house,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: in the place, the place of comfort, the place of containment,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: where femininity can exist, then the horse pokes its head
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: over my shoulder. You know, then the horse comes in
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: and it intrudes so that there is a way in
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: which libido is thrusting itself into this situation. And she's
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: not really kind of cottoned on to it yet, except
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: that she's had this dream. So that there is, the
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: possibility exists for this to be incorporated.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: Yes. And I can see that. I mean, it is
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: a strange presence, not only for our dream ego, but
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: for the women who live in the enclosure with the fence.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: Everybody in the dream is a little uneasy about this
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: horse thing.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: You know, she says that the women were a little
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: bit frightened or wary. of the horse coming in. And
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: ain't it the truth? Do we really want to answer
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: the call? What is our relationship with a horse? Well,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: we can be horse and rider, but horses can buck.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: They can bite. They can kick. There is a wildness
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: in a horse. that's also there. It's not sweet and
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: easy and friendly like your pet dog all the time
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: or peacefully sort of stolidly grazing in a pasture like
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: a cow. You're really going to have to grapple with
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: this energy.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not quite as easy to control.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: Not as easy, but there it is.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: And it represents some exciting new potential.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: It certainly does.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to submit a dream suggest an episode
• 1:24:34
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